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PENTAGONO DECLARES END TO AN IRAQ WAR OF MIXED RESULTS
BAGHDAD — Almost nine years after the first American tanks began massing on the Iraq border, the Pentagon declared an official end to itsmission here, closing a troubled conflict that helped reshape American politics and left a bitter legacy of anti-American sentiment across the Muslim world.
As Defense Secretary Leon E. Panettamarked theoccasion with a speech in a fortified concrete courtyard at the Baghdad airport, helicopters hovered above, underscoring the challenges facing a country where insurgents continue to attack Americansoldiers and where militants with Al Qaeda still regularly carry out devastating attacks against civilians.
“Let me be clear: Iraq will be tested in the days ahead — by terrorism, and by those whowould seek to divide, by economic and social issues, by the demands of democracy itself,” Mr. Panetta said. “Challenges remain, but the U.S. will be there to stand by the Iraqi people as they navigatethose challenges to build a stronger and more prosperous nation.”
Those words sounded an uncertain trumpet for a war that was begun in 2003 to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction that provedillusory. The conflict was also cast as an effort to bring democracy to the Middle East — another pretext that rang hollow during Iraq’s worst sectarian bloodletting, and that hampered Washington’s effortsin the past year to support the peaceful protesters of the Arab Spring.
The American withdrawal opens a new chapter for Iraq, a nation forged less than a century ago by British colonialists andtortured ever since by rebellions, wars and brutal dictatorship. Long a borderland between Persian and Arab empires, the country still struggles to balance the ambitions of Iran, the powerful theocraticneighbor whose nuclear program has become a profound concern to the United States and its allies.
For Americans, the ceremony on Thursday marked an uneasy moment of closure, with no clear sense of...